


Now

by Aithilin



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Coming Out, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Public Display of Affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 02:56:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19454890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: Nyx was by no means starved for affection. But he couldn't always display it with Noctis as easily as he wanted.





	Now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JazzRaft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/gifts).



Affection came easy to Nyx. It was ingrained in every gesture and habit, every appreciative look and friendly encounter. He reasoned that Galahdians thought nothing of throwing an arm across the shoulders of a friend, or practically pouncing on one another after a long separation of dangerous few days apart. He reasoned that it was their culture, the same way Noctis and Promptis tended to drape themselves across each other when relaxed in the same room. 

Just a little louder, the same way Galahdian habit always seemed to be when compared to Lucian stiffness. 

There were times when he ached to launch himself at Noctis on a whim. To scoop the Prince up in his affection when they were alone or with their close friends. When they no longer had to hide behind the stiff, steady decorum of a servant and master.

There were long nights spent out on the dusty front lines, watching the stars from behind the safety of a circle of floodlights pointed outward to the terrors of the daemon-filled nights. When his hand itched to hold Noctis’ hand, and he’d look over and wish he was seeing Noctis watching the stars with him, quicksilver eyes alert in the night. When his arms ached to hold Noctis, to curl around his lover in the quiet of the dark and illusion of calm. 

It was even worse when he did get home and he had to pretend to be the stoic hero everyone had expected. 

The long hours cramped together in the trucks— tired, pained, mourning— as they rolled through the city that should have been celebrating their return (according to Tredd, who griped loudly and often about it). The immediate announcement that they needed to clean up and present themselves to a royal inspection, that they were going to be kept longer in their uniforms and paraded about like dolls. The longer waits as they stood as statues, as Nyx resisted the urge to smile, to show his affection, to reach for the Prince as he followed in his father’s shadow. 

Nyx didn’t like the way he was forced to pent it all up. To coil the affection, the adoration, the longing and habits, deep inside him, until he was alone— or near enough— with Noctis to release the tension. He didn’t like the way he would need to follow step by step, the shift from relieved affection with Libertus and Crowe— the quick, easy touches, the laughter and smiles, the teasing and snide quips between them without any bite— to passionate love with Noctis. He didn’t like the way he felt caged inside himself until they were in his tiny little apartment deep in the Galahdian warrens, or nestled close in in the lofty apartment Noctis kept above the traffic of the city. 

He didn’t like the sudden release, the jealousy and longing, the hesitation that followed as he let himself wonder just how much of Noctis’ quiet aloofness was really a mask, and how much was his own entitled disinterest as a prince. 

He didn’t like thinking like that. Like he wasn’t meant to touch and hold and nuzzle and tease. Not meant to drag Noctis down to the sofa with a laugh, spilling the drinks they were meant to share, or back into the bed where that fluttering fear that he was doing something forbidden— handling something forbidden— was banished to the edge of his mind. With the dark dreams and the nightmares of daemons in the war he had never meant to fight. 

He didn’t like the loneliness it sparked in him, and the starvation caused by holding back. 

“One day,” Noctis promised often enough for Nyx to hear it echoing in the quiet of the front lines between the roars of the beasts and daemons. 

“One day,” Noctis muttered between them, when their lips grazed everywhere but where they needed. And hands teased as easily as coy smiles and heated breath. 

“When?” Nyx wanted to ask, wondering if he the kiss shared the night before he climbed into the trucks with his friends was the last one they’d share. If the accidental brush of hands would be enough to tide him over as he was weeks, months, staring down the barrel of Nif rifles and into the gaping maws of Nif-bred daemons. 

“One day.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“When?”

“You’ll know,” Noctis said once, with a smile on his lips. Lips that Nyx could never resist. That he’d stoop for, tilt up to him, admire and taste and dream about. “I promise, it’s soon.”

Affection in Galahd was normal. It was easy. It was all about bonding and life— relief and friendship. He had memories of Selena launching herself at him for hugs, of her skinny arms dragging Libertus down with them until they were a laughing pile of family on the floor. He remembered the easy kisses and touches, the way his father’s hand graced his mother’s back as he moved around her in the kitchen to steal a bite of dinner before it was ready. The easy way Libertus threw an arm across his shoulders as they hiked to their favourite spots deep in the mountain, and reached for each other as they walked the jagged edge of the Canyon. 

But the way Noctis pulled him down, in front of everyone, for a kiss when he got back one day shocked him.

There was a buzz in the air as they returned. A living excitement that only bled over into their tired relief at being behind the safety of the Wall. There was a crowd of loved ones waiting for their return as always, but with a noticeable gap among the eager, smiling faces. 

“This an event?” Pelna asked, eyeing the crowd that had parted around the Lucian Crown Prince— the Shield as Noctis’ back, looking smug a always. 

“No?” Libertus offered, just as confused, as uncertain. As lost in the strangeness of the appearance. 

But Nyx was the one to stay quiet, to fight against every instinct and almost pull away as Noctis reached for his hands with the ease as when they were alone. “Highness?”

“Now, hero,” Noctis muttered where the crowd moved to their own loved ones, despite the spectacle. 

And that was when he saw it— when they all did— the screens that broadcast advertisement and news and gossip across the city along with travel advisories and weather forecasts. The Crown Prince had a sweetheart, had announced his sexuality to close off a month of celebrating Nyx had missed. 

It was brief, because the whole of his attention was on Noctis in that moment. And the easy calm of their hands together in public. “Now?”

The kiss was brief, and sweet. A chaste peck that Nyx knew would be covered by every news source in the kingdom by morning. 

It was easy and light and the simple, quenching affection that Nyx had been dying for.


End file.
